Monthly Archives: June 2018

“The long span of the bridge of your life is supported by countless cables called habits, attitudes, and desires. What you do in life depends upon what you are and what you want. What you get from life depends upon how much you want it, how much you are willing to work and plan and cooperate and use your resources. The long span of the bridge of your life is supported by countless cables that you are spinning now, and that is why today is such an important day. Make the cables strong!” — L.G. Elliott

I read this quote over the weekend and I just love the simple, yet profound message. Your long-term narrative is determined by your short-term actions and it is important to put in the time, effort and care into the little things you do if you want to have an impact on the ultimate outcome of your life.

We all come into work each day and for the most part, we are in control of what goes down. Meaning, if we want to be really alert, efficient and productive we can and conversely if we want to coast thru the day and/or just turn in mediocre work, that is an option too. The former is preferred, but the latter happens more than most would like, especially by me, the employer of 14 employees.

Now sometimes we are hungover, super tired from lack of sleep or even sick and on those days we have greater forces taking over and impacting things. Hopefully, we all take actions to avoid those, such as not getting [too] drunk, trying to get a solid 8 hours of shut-eye and/or working out and eating right to maintain good health. That being said they are sometimes inevitable and when those do happen we have less control over the outcome.

That is all the more reason that when you wake up coherent, well rested and in good health, you should be grateful for the day that lies ahead of you and put in your best effort. Not for your employer, but selfishly for yourself and the bridge you want to build. Put in the kind of effort that your future you will be proud of today and then do that for as many days as you are able.

Trust me, they add up and suddenly your bridge has taken you very far and the foundation and support cables are rock solid. You cannot do yesterday over and you don’t need to worry about tomorrow just yet. It all comes down to what you do today.

On this episode, I break down the marketing genius of IHOB from IHOP. In case you missed it, the company announced it would be changing its name by replacing the P for pancakes, with B for burgers and the internet freaked out. There was so much hype in June around the name and this for a brand that I (and many) haven’t thought about in quite some time.

The move, it turns out was a publicity stunt to announce the addition of burgers to the menu to help capture off-peak hour business and help turn the tide on declining numbers, experienced by most brands in their category. IHOP and their creative agency decided to temporarily change its name (with no intent on keeping it that way) to earn massive exposure and accelerate WOM around their message. While most of the chatter was negative, mainly from IHOP loyalists, the masses did their heavy lifting for them and got the word out that burgers are now ready for consumption at an IHOP near you.

Competitor brands with smart social media teams, jumped in right away to get into the dialogue. Hats off to Burger King, for quickly making this new mock logo and pushing it out via Twitter. This was a very easy way for them to use the draft wind of IHOPs move, to accelerate their own brand message. #wellplayed

While this article in Adweek claims that foot traffic did not increase following the stunt, it does concur that the buzz/awareness was valuable in its own right and IHOP claims that the data used by Foursquare does not accurately capture the true metrics. It appears that the brand is pleased with the play and I think Droga5 deserves some brops (see what I did there?) for the work!

Here at Sircle Media, we just love our amazing interns. They provide invaluable support and a fresh perspective that our clients really benefit from. We want you to get to know them better and to that end, today we spotlight Carly Schindler.

Hometown: Plainview, New York

School: Tulane University

Major:Marketing and Psychology

Why Sircle?: Sircle is providing a valuable experience to work on real accounts with real clients and learn what goes into scheduling and creating social media content. So far I have not been asked to make any copies or get anyone coffee and instead, I have been asked to do actual productive work! I am glad I picked Sircle because I have learned so much already, and I am looking forward to learning much more before the end of summer that I can actually use in the future.

Random Fun Fact: I am a singer and I play guitar and piano! I also speak English, French, and Jibberish!

Most Likely To…: Be caught singing around the office

Favorite Book/Movie: Favorite book of the moment is “The Woman in the Window” by A.J. Finn, but I am currently reading “The Third Twin” by Ken Follett, and it might give it a run for its money!

Appetizer or Dessert? Appetizer

Beach or Forest? Beach

Favorite Client to Work On: So far, I really like working on Koia! I am personally allergic to most things and I have always been obsessed with any new Vegan, Non-Dairy, health-related products, and Koia is something that I would genuinely want to buy in real life.

When you need to go into deep work mode and you are finding it difficult to get started, to stay focused once started or to just really go all in, you need to take steps beforehand to increase your chances of succeeding. An old coach used to bark at my team – “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail” and I really find that to be so true in life. Deal yourself in with a winning hand and set yourself up to win.

One move that I have found to be really helpful with this, is having music playlists that are meant for deep work. I highly recommend having a “beast mode” playlist teed up and ready for you to throw on whenever it is game time.

With streaming music so readily available at your fingertips these days, you can easily grab any kind of music you want at any time. I suggest songs with no or very little lyrics that have consistent beats (i.e. EDM, Classical, Meditation) so you don’t get distracted and stay completely focused.

First, start by making the list or just search for public playlists using the term FLOW, DEEP FOCUS or even STUDY and borrow one. Then play it the next time you have a big project to plow thru. Do it over and over until you create a habit and that way when your brain hears that music, it is conditioned to know what’s up.

It takes a while for your brain to associate the music with the hard work you’re getting ready to do, but it’s a habit that’s definitely worth forming. This type of conditioning or programming is proven to work, and it is a smart investment to make in and for yourself. Here is one I like and have found really works for me and I would love to hear ones that any of you have created.

On this episode, we break down the brand GREATS, another brand doing everything right from a digital POV. These days there are so many websites and countless brands, trying to sell to you online. It is hard to differentiate, but some dare to be great (sorry, had to) and stick the landing with next level E-commerce skills. GREATS is one of those brands.

From the first time seeing their content, all the way thru to the first time you slip their products on your feet, it is an epic experience. These guys really understand how to balance branding and sales. They create great content, are great at community management and engagement and are great at getting a user down their sales funnel and converting them from prospect to customer. Their name is super fitting.

Summertime is always a favorite for the Sircle team, at least it is for me. My name is Lizzie and I’ve been helping Adam coordinate our summer intern class – all 21 of them.

Sircle Media is a blessing in that we are able to have interns from all over. Some move to NYC for the summer while others work remotely. My favorite part is an interns first day and getting to show them around. They’re all a little nervous, excited, and eager to prove themselves.

This summer, we’re doing something new to get to know our interns better. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing their intern profiles, and to kick it off I’ve compiled their go-to songs on Spotify into one playlist.

The songs are random from all different genres, but they work to form a cohesive unit and tell the story of our interns. You don’t know who submitted what, which makes it even more uniform and tells a group story.

Click here or on the image above and take a listen for yourself – I think it’s pretty special!

On this episode, I throw some props to Outerknown, a brand that I think is doing everything right when it comes to digital. From prospecting thru Instagram (which offers amazing targeting at very low CPMs) to retargeting me with Facebook Ads, they effectively got me into their funnel. They then had a social following (based on brand and awareness) that gave me a social queue that they might be a brand worth exploring further, based on social interest within the Facebook Graph.

On their website, they offered a first-time buyer discount to incentivize me to purchase and I pulled the trigger and purchased shorts from them that came in record speed mind you. I wanted to return two pairs for credit and their outsourced Zendesk customer service solution was excellent and resolved it for me right away.

When I went back to buy some new pairs, I didn’t want to pay full retail so I put some items in my cart and bet that this smart brand would have an abandoned cart campaign in motion in short order. Of course, they did and when they teed up a 20% cart completion offer I pounced!

On top of all of this their branding and messaging from the packaging, to their emails is sharp and memorable. A cherry on top is that they have a sustainable mission and are the type of brand I want to invest my money and attention with. #wellplayed

This week, I am all about perspective. I tell my team that it is on all of us to get up every day, get our mind right and then put in the work that will help each member and in turn, the team and the company succeed. As young members of the workforce, it is mission critical that we have a strong mindset, confidence in yourself and your situation and the right POV.

To help get there, it is so important to take stock of your immediate, inner circle and assess whether or not each person drags you down or builds you up. So many successful people talk about this topic as a key to success and Will Smith broke it down in an interview a while back. Curate your crew and make sure you surround yourself with winners as best you can.

Regardless, the heavy lifting lies with you. It is very easy to sell yourself on anything (good or bad) and you need to keep things in perspective and adopt a positive mindset. If you start there, then you are putting yourself at an advantage and you will find much more fulfillment in your daily life.

At Sircle, you work at a social media agency (exciting and emerging category), in NYC (many would argue is the best city in the world), that works almost exclusively with healthy CPG brands (that are mostly good humans, making good products that add value to people’s lives) in a WeWork (young, fun, progressive work environment) and for a boss who embraces work-life balance, self-exploration, meditation and mindfulness, personal development and growth and who implemented remote Fridays to help offset the grind of commuting and offer up more autonomy and freedom over your schedule. Needless to say, s@#t could be worse.

Sometimes even the best of us lose perspective and it is so important to snap back to the reality of your scenario from time to time. Let’s all take a deep breath, appreciate what we have and the table that has been set for us and go and execute. Remember, your altitude is determined by your attitude!